Live the SEO Dream, One Blog at a Time

Blogging can be fun, challenging and downright beneficial for Web workers who approach this form of content marketing with SEO top-of-mind. But where do you start? Here are eight ways to optimize your blog posts for the search engines and turn your SEO dreams into reality.

1. Target Long-Tail Keywords

The first step before even creating the headline is to find a long-tail keyword. Long-tail keywords are keywords (usually three or more in a phrase) that are branching from its main, parent keyword.

Let me give you an example:

Dog could be the "main" keyword. Now let’s add some words to that keyword in order to make it a long-tail keyword.

"How to Train a Dog". That is now a long-tail keyword. All I did was add more words to the main keyword. That is it.

2. Add, But Don't Stuff the "Keyword"

If you have identified the main keyword, then you have a job to do with that keyword. Just finding the keyword and not using it is utterly useless to SEO. As much as you can, add the keyword into the article body of your post. But don't overdo it. Have a keyword density that doesn't make it redundant, is the best way to go at it.

3. Optimize Your Post For SEO

Optimize your post as you write the article. This best practice has helped me gain a "rise" in Google.

It is not hard to do, and it should never be long. Add your keywords with H1 and H2 tags, or even H3 tags too. That is all the optimization I do for the "H" tags, and is an easy trick to do while you write.

4. Have Social Sharing Buttons Visible To Your Post

Social sharing through the Internet has taken charge for traffic generation. Social sharing is a fine way to generate some of your traffic to your site as well. It can also help you with your SEO efforts. Those that have been shared the most are "ranked" higher than those that haven't shared as much.

Next time you take a look at a top result, take a look at the tweets, likes, or +1's on that specific post. It will change your mind. It does matter. They’re some wordpress plugins that can help you get those social sharing buttons to your post.

5. Add the Most Quality Links To Your Page

Links rule in the SEO game. If I told the most important hand in SEO is, it would be links. But many don't get right. They might get it right for a little while, but fail very soon as Google slaps them with a penalty.

It may seem to take longer, but the results are incredible when they start to take effect on certain pages.

6. Have Your Keyword in the Url and Title

This is a very important best practice. I recommend this step and it is necessary step to take every time you are trying to rank a piece of content.

7. The Anchor Text of Your Links

Anchor text of your links back to your page will help you rank more on a specific keyword.

If you are trying to rank for a "specific" phrase and you are wondering why your post is missing for that respective "keyword".

It could be most likely the anchor texts of your links are saying something else other than the "keyword". Next time, try to create excellent quality links with the anchor text that matches your "right" keyword or phrase.

8. Create A Well-Designed Article.

If your article is worthy of ranking higher than "normal", then it is going to be ranked well. Create a post that has excellent quality to it and has a number of images to it.

Google indexes those images and might send you some traffic that way. Also create videos and add them to your post.

Create a YouTube video, and link that to your article. Any traffic that goes to the video can also go to your website or blog.

Recap of the Eight!

If you are looking to get that number one spot on your next post, then these tricks will surely help you out. Target long-tail keywords, and build high quality links back to that specific page. Very easy to do, and over time, you will climb the ranks and get that number one spot!

So, if you ever got that number-one spot before, how did you do it? I would love to hear how you did!